YouSaid · the spoken record

Robyn Grew

lines on the record: 87
first: 2023-05-19
most recent: 2023-05-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's innovative. It can increase productivity. We use it as part of our processing of data, of large data, of looking at our models, of looking portfolio construction. We have used it, for example, for ESG prediction metrics. Let's look about where we see weather cycles. We look at it and we use it in neurolinguistic programming to look at, to make sense of sentiment in annual reporting, for example. So so many different applications. By nature, as you know, Barry, we are an open source space. We love it. Our developers love it. I mean, I wish I was as smart as a developer, but our developers love open source. It makes them better. When you look at GitHub, which is one of these mechanisms, which I'm sure most people know, I think we're number two on GitHub. But it's this sense of...”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can gain alpha from it, whether it makes us smarter, whether it allows us to commoditize something, which reduces cost, whatever it may be, and making that happen. I think AI can do much more, for example, than just automate.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a cinema one, let me say we view technology and the adoption of AI technology as a fundamental part of innovation. And it's useful across our entire organization in the investment process, but also through trading and execution. It's used at every single juncture. We're constantly looking to align the latest technology and latest techniques with our underlying investment philosophies, not the other way around. Does that make sense? So what are the tools that make us better at delivering what we do? New technologies aren't a replacement. For me, they're rather a complement to what we are trying to achieve. And we're never going to be reliant on one technology. This space is moving so quickly. It's about adopting the new, finding its application, seeing whether we can.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was an interesting piece on a podcast listening to Fran Liboyitz actually the other day. And she was talking about the massive loss we had in the 80s with the age crisis of artists. But she made this really great point, which is it wasn't just the artists we lost, we lost the audience. We lost the discerning audience in that process too. It resonated with me about how we think about man. We want our clients to be smarter and better and equipped with what we can give them because they hold us as we hold ourselves accountable. They're the better audience that makes the better performance.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I was like, okay, we can talk to you about that too. The point is, it's not just about delivering a fund. Here's a product, let me flog it to you. It's about a much deeper relationship for us and it's about delivering all of the firm, not just part of the firm. And that is important to us because I think we do a better job. And by the way, I'll put this in there as well. believe in making our clients smarter and better because they make us smarter and better in return.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were talking to me and they said, Listen, we really would like to do is sit down with you. And there are two or three areas. And I was like, terrific. What do you want to talk about? And they said, well, first of all, we'd like to understand data and how you manage data and how you manage your technology in that. I said, great. And then they said, and then the second thing is, we'd really like your help in understanding our portfolio construction and whether what we think it's doing is what it's doing or whether we've got correlation where we didn't think we'd have correlation or how we're positioned. And we said, sure, we've got tools that can help you do that. And then the third thing they said, I really want to talk to you about how you're achieving diversity and equity and inclusion. Really?”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It can be that, it can be anything that they want in reality. We are much more about understanding client needs. And remember, they have, as you know, vast portfolios, trillions of dollars that they're putting to work. We're part of that. And doing absent understanding what they're trying to achieve is less efficient potentially for them. So let me give you an example of what I mean by this. I was speaking to a couple of clients in the last couple of days.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The capability that man has to do that is what we have spent time and energy and money on and technology on. Let's be clear, we talk about tech, and I'm sure we'll cover it later. We talk about how we deploy tech and we think about tech within that quant space. But we deploy technology throughout the organization to give us scale and capability that we use to service our clients”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the reality for me is that more and more institutional clients need something in a separately managed account. They want something that's bespoke to them and the portfolio risks or construction that they need answers to. These are long strategic relationships where we are investing time and effort in partnership within these institutions to understand what their portfolio construction needs to look like or what they want to achieve. And then we are part of helping them understand that and helping”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the savings of real individuals, the individuals that my mum and dad, right? The doctors, the teachers, the metal workers in Holland, wherever they may be. And we partner with those institutions to return value. And that's our only goal. When we come in in the morning, we think about who the real underlying clients are here and how we partner and ensure that we're returning alpha. We're an active manager and that solutions piece is how we create bespoke solutions. So we'll take elements or particular strategies from each part of our discretionary strategy and match it with a quant strategy and return it to clients because we understand and we work with them on their portfolio, their exposure, what they need to achieve, their risk management to create something that is bespoke for them.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So man is a, as you said, nearly 145 billion dollar hedge fund. It's there to and long only. It's not just a hedge fund. It's not just doing long short, it's doing long only. It's got private markets. It's through the credit curve. It has core business engines which are driven via styles. So we have large quant businesses, CTA and equity quant businesses. We have a discretionary business. What some of you might have already been familiar with in GLG. We have a private markets business, which is focused really on real estate. And the single family real estate ownership piece and community housing. And then we have something called solutions. And the solutions piece is the piece where we work with, in effect, our institutional clients, we're an institutional client business, but those institutional clients are pension funds, they're endowments, they are looking after the pension.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be smart, be dumb. And what that retranslated into was if you don't understand something that's going on, if you're in a meeting, you don't get it. If you're outside of a meeting, don't get it, say something. Actually ask the question because you'd be surprised how many people can't answer the question, by the way, but also it's okay not to know everything. It's the only way you learn. I still use that. I might have it, I don't have it on a lose site anymore, but I absolutely believe that to be the case. If you don't get it, ask a question. I'm not supposed to know everything in the room. That's not the point, but I would like to understand what's going on”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely That's right Absolutely right. And, you know, they had a phrase which I still use. You know, when you get at that point in investment banking, you ended up with those looseites with various things that you're supposed to, and a mouse match with something as well. All the little banking things, whatever. And they had one phrase. And I still use it, which is be smart, be dumb. And it's kind of a curious.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And inclusion was at Lehman in New York and was sponsored by people like Joe Gregory, who was just a real champion of that content. So maybe I'm thick-skinned or something, but the truth of the matter is I loved it. I enjoyed it. And I think Lehman was, I owe a lot to my experiences of that organization.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm slightly worried I'm going to disappoint you with this answer. But it was fabulous. I had the best time and I never encountered that sense of being overwhelmed by a masculine, overtly bullying kind of culture. In fact, some of the early work that I did on diversity”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, after running and building up that sort of that team, I hired my successor, by the way, fabulous thing to do. I suggest everybody does that, actually. I mean, genuinely we can talk about it later, but that ability to hire tremendously strong quality people around you is, I think, been an enormous opportunity and provides you with opportunity, one with opportunity to move on and do more. So I got a call. I got a call from the US who said, hey, how'd your fancy coming to the US? And that again was to work at Lehman's headquarters. Fabulous opportunity. So off we went from Japan to New York. That was a cultural change. Yeah, to say the very...”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was extraordinary and brilliant. And the things you learn when you live overseas, I'm not sure I can never really put in value on those experiences. Being responsible for a region in which you are very much alien in that space where you have to learn cultural cues in a way that you've never had to understand them before, where you're navigating different countries and different relationships between those countries, which are also tricky, Lehman had its headquarters for Asia Pac unusually in Tokyo. Most others had a kind of a Hong Kong piece or a Singapore piece and then ex-Japan piece of it. That wasn't how Lehman did it. So being responsible for Asia Pac was From a Tokyo base was brilliant.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, well, for the year of that first year of the investigation, I flew backwards and forwards to London. This is becoming a theme with me flying backwards and forwards to London. And then after that, another two and a half years where we actually lived in Japan. Fabulous.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct working in London. And again, first time I'd worked on the sales side, and that's where I sort of feel I had my biggest growth and my growing up was in that Lehman Brothers phase, but in part because I again benefited from being in the mix when we were the second bank that was raided by the Japanese regulators after they'd gone into credit suites. And the Japanese regulators were having a tough time with cross-collaterization and issues about whether there were balance sheet accounting issues.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. It was a baptism of fire and it was something which was phenomenal to actually be part of, but for the fact that you're living it. Does that make sense? It's like as an academic exercise, marvelous. When you're in the middle of it, you're kind of so caught in it. And I ended up working on the fixed income floors until...”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, spot on. And I was thrown at a, okay, we now need to know what have we got in Russia, what's our exposure, what are our legal contracts, how does this work? And I was one of many, many people, but talk about landing and the rubber hitting the road. And at that point, Lehman's share price had its first sort of crumbs moment. And that was fascinating to just be in the inner workings. Baptisms of fire, I sort of enjoy, I shouldn't probably.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks for that. We'll talk about that later, Barry. So the sense of, again, another opportunity just sort of thrown in my way. And as I joined Lima Brothers, it was the first time that Russia had a little bit of a crisis.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another one that will be a few hundred years old, again set up by, you know, brothers and all the rest of it. And that was another conversation where they were looking for somebody, quite frankly, who had some sort of futures option style of experience because they wanted somebody to go and sit on a fixed income floor.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or life as life. A couple of years just over again. And then I got another call. I know. This seems to be a process. So I got a call and this one was ultimately from a recruiter who was working for Lehman Brothers. an investment bank, a bondhouse.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a lot. In fact, I said, and there's a chat who I'm still in touch with who repeats this at regular intervals to my embarrassment. He says, you said, you know a postage stamp and you know really large writing. That's how much I know, but I'm a super quick learner.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or their gestures thereby. Right. And so you're looking at at that point very forward thinking videotaped evidence. You've got Pitt observers and you are trying to piece if there are malpractices going on. You need to piece that all together. And so at that point you are building a case. You are running a market investigations team, which is looking at ensuring proper conduct. From a regulatory perspective, you are the regulator, you are managing the efficacy of those markets and across futures and options. And so I went to an interview and they said, how much do you know about futures and options? And I said,”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, right? So, what happens is when you work in an open outcry environment, there are training practices that Get investigated. And those trading practices are quite, they're fun, they're interesting, and they're complex because it's all about hand signals. Right. And”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's an exchange. It's an open outcry exchange. In fact, at that time, the biggest open outcry exchange in Europe. And we had, it was a time when life was biggest in the Bund contract.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I was exactly, and then I was called into 91, so in that 90s period. And then I was called by a headhunter, by a recruiter who said, listen, there's this, I spent a couple of years at Fidelity by this time, there's a role at this thing called life or Liffy. Right. And they really need somebody who understands a criminal law. And they need it because when they conduct interviews, It's undertaken under this police and criminal evidence act thing. In other words, it's done in a way that whatever is said in that interview could be brought as evidence in a court. And I said, well, I know that bit of it. I've done that bit. And so I turned up to life.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and you don't know when you're being interviewed and when you're not being interviewed, quite frankly. It was one of the come and meet these people. And it was, I had a great time. I'm a chatty kind of individual. And off I went round the room, chatted for a couple of hours, and then left.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In commerce. So there was an advertisement in the newspaper that's a thing. That's how old I am. There was an advertisement in a newspaper for fidelity. And I thought, well, that sounds interesting. They wanted to have new kind of graduates, postgraduate type people to come and do a round robin. And that's also an expression that gets used with me a lot. And so I applied and I sent in a letter and I said, yes, it sounds terribly interesting. Can you give me a shot at this? And I got invited to this interview thing. And it was a thing because I turned up and there were 150 people in a room. It was the cattle call. And I totally knew to me and I had no idea that this is what happened. So I just chatted to everybody I met. I'm just chatting.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a plan to get into this space, get experience from being an insider in business, and go back. And I got hooked. I just never went back.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of his head on whatever it was he had taken, that they were actually worried for my safety. And I went home that night and I went, do you know what? I might not want to do this forever. This might not be a good idea. And I thought, I know what I'll do. I will go into commerce. That's what I thought. I'll go into commerce. I'll go into business. And then I will go back and I will be a commercial barrister where they don't have to get listen to sales and see whether and be worried about the safety. They have to deal with people like me now. So that's what the plan was. And so...”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It entered my mind when very early on I found myself in a position where I was looking at a brief that had come to me and it was yet another sort of sketchy criminal defense piece where I had to go and interview a client who had been arrested because he had been out on bail and escaped bail. And I went to a very old magistrate's court in London at Bow Street, so very close to Covent Garden and very old cells. And the doors of these cells were built for men. And you, Barry, you have the benefit of seeing how short I am or tall I am. You're five foot nothing, right? I'm five foot nothing. And so I couldn't see through the little window. I just couldn't reach it, right? I just, it wasn't April. So the guards had to actually stand.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're spot on. I actually qualified as a barrister, which is the fun words of I went to the bar. People use that all the time to describe me. And you're right, I had thought I was going to be an advocate, quite frankly, a barrister, you know, the one with the wigs and the gowns that you see on TV. My roots were very reasonably humble. My dad was a public GP, you know, in the National Health Service in England and my mum was a public school teacher. And quite frankly, I didn't know what financial services was. It was this thing that existed somewhere else. And so when I went to law school and went to the bar, I had every thought that I was just going to be a barrister and be another vocational professional in my family.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's 240 years old. Put it that way, 1783. And you're right, it traces its way back to sugar trading. And at one point being the monopolistic supplier of rum to the Royal Navy, and in those days, that was important because everybody had a ration in the Royal Navy and everybody wanted to use it. And it's the journey, isn't it? It's the journey of organizations to continue to be relevant. So 240 years ago, it's a conversation I have with people, which is if we didn't keep changing, we'd still be making barrels on the side of the River Thames and trading sugar and hoping that the Royal Navy still needed a lot of rum. So that's not where we are today, but the roots are deep. And now we're just shy of 145 billion dollars of assets under management across the entire credit curve, trading through our CTAs and quant, through discretionary and private markets, reaching”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is nothing short of surreal. This is obviously new news for this particular podcast, and it is, you hear the words that people say, you know, it's an honor and it's a privilege. And it sounds a little trite. And then you find yourself in one of these rare positions where somebody's asking you to take on the CEO. And I have to tell you, I mean it very authentically. It's an honour and it's a privilege and it is slightly surreal.”
2023-05-19 · Masters in Business · Robyn Grew on Portfolio Construction · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source